Which one is right: Is body weight due to genes -- or is it a consequence of lifestyle habits?

Two strong voices have come out, battling for each side of the debate. Most recently, New York Times reporter Gina Kolata wrote about the power of genes to dictate body weight. Her evidence comes from studies of:

• volunteers prodded by researchers to lose weight (all regained it by the end of the experiment)


• adopted children who mimicked their biological, not adoptive, parents’ weight range


• fraternal twins who varied in weight more than identical twins

As blogs and headlines blaze about American Idol winner Jordin Sparks -- and her body size -- I can’t help but wonder what messages her many fans are taking to heart, and stomach.

Jordan is curvy. And people call that “fat,” “overweight,” or “obese.” If that’s the common perception of a celebrity who isn't stick-sized, then millions of fans, who are also not skeletal, are probably thinking, “what about me?”

Blogs and headlines are abuzz about the body size of American Idol Jordin Sparks. If she takes the name-calling to heart (and stomach), she may engage in a regimen of unhealthy, “pro-thin” behaviors to try and join the ranks of idol winners and finalists Ruben Studdard (who lost 100 pounds), Diana DeGarmo (who dropped three dress sizes --to a size four), Carrie Underwood, (who’s accused of losing too much weight), Jennifer Hudson (who lost weight for her role in the movie DreamGirls) and Taylor Hicks (who lost 22 pounds and made the cover of People Magazine). Among other offshoots of the show, “Idol” is becoming a weight loss plan.

If you haven’t been paying attention, our nation’s weight obsession has just shifted to a whole new level. American Idol Jordin Sparks took anti-fat hits from National Action Against Obesity head, Meme Roth. Meanwhile, Roth took anti-thin hits from American Idol fans.

Both sides of the weight spectrum are playing war games with arsenals of pseudomedicine.

At the center, if there is one, is our culture’s ambivalence about fat and how much people should be carrying around (and on what part of their bodies). This weight consciousness is supposedly about health. But, we’d be kidding ourselves to presume that Sparks is being attacked because of her risk for future coronary disease -- or that Roth has been called the “c-word” because her thinness--dubbed “anorexia” by opponents--renders her vulnerable to osteoporosis.

They do it because they want to be fat.

Women in Mauritania, on the northwest coast of Africa, stuff themselves and their daughters to torturous discomfort, even death, because obesity is their ideal of female beauty.

Across the ocean, Americans may gasp at the details: In a recent New York Times article, Sharon LaFraniere reports on five-year-old Mauritanian girls forced to drink up to five gallons of creamy camel’s milk daily; nine-year-olds made to ingest their own vomit (produced after force feeding); and teenagers "gavaged," a take-off on the French practice in which a funnel is inserted into a goose’s mouth and grain poured down in order to fatten up the fowl for foie gras.

But before we howl, “Barbaric!” let's turn the lens into a mirror -- and look at what we do to our own daughters in what we view as our "enlightened" corner of the world.